SHOOTING STAR – PART VI

“STAR STRUCK”

U.N. HELICOPTER #1: Helo Fox to Base, we are about two mikes out and have both packages on board.

U.S. AIRBASE: 10-4! We will have personnel on the ground awaiting your arrival. See you when you get here!

U.N. HELICOPTER #1: 10-4!

During the whole flight from downtown Raleigh to their final destination deep in the West Virginia mountains, a make-shift airbase, Vince fell asleep from the exhaustion and his mind just being overwhelmed. With just under a minute to land, he begins to wake up and adjust his eyes to the soldiers inside the cargo bay with him. He quickly notices that they all have transformed in front of him, neither one of them are wearing their gas mask, but he quickly realizes that he’s having slight issues breathing. He goes to scratch his face and hits hard plastic on his cheek area, and quickly begins to feel around his face and notices that he is wearing a gas mask himself. Vince begins to freak out and grabs the closes soldier to him by the blouse and starts to become aggressive by tugging and pulling. Just as he realizes that he can take the mask off himself, the attempt becomes quickly squashed as the soldiers grab his arms to keep him from removing it. The fight continues in the back of the helicopter and grabs the pilots’ attention when the helo starts shaking and the commotion in the back gets very loud.

One of the pilot’s starts yelling through his headset to the soldiers in the back, but gets no response. Unable to unbuckle to check on what is happening, one of the soldiers respond on their headset, ‘situation is under control’. Almost immediately after the soldier said that, Vince was struck in the midsection and flipped on his side with his hands bound behind him. Vince tries to scream through the gas mask, but his screams and words were muffled. Just as the helicopter touched down on the helo pad, several medical personnel rushed towards them and quickly grabbed Vince out the cargo bay, threw him on a stretcher and wheeled him into an awaiting ambulance. Christina’s helicopter lands a few seconds later and although she doesn’t see what happened to Vince, she knew something wasn’t right. With her hands bounded in front of her she was more cooperative and didn’t fight with the soldiers escorting her to another awaiting ambulance. Once Christina enters the rear of the emergency vehicle, she is strapped down, gas mask removed and feels the ambulance speeding away with the siren blaring.

In a few quick minutes, the ambulance that Vince was in pulled into a bay and the doors quickly opened where more medical personnel were stationed in full body chemical suits. Vince’s gas mask was removed and the sweat started to pour from his forehead as they escorted him to another part of the facility. Halfway through the escort Vince was cooperative and making smart remarks about the situation until he saw that he was going to be quarantined. This just sparked up the aggressive fight once again, but with limited range of motion with his arms still bound behind him. Knowing this he starts to use his shoulders and his body weight to shove off the medical staff, and for a few seconds he was gaining the upper hand. He even kicked one staffer in the groin and just watched the man fall to the ground in pain, holding himself, but the joke was on him. Vince received a strike in the groin from behind and unable to use his hands to hold himself, he tightly closed his legs together and dropped to his knees. Coughing on his knees, he hears boots being walked from behind to in front of him. Looking up he sees a purple haired woman standing in front of him, but that vision went black when he was knocked out by a boot kick to the face.

Christina’s reaction when she saw herself being escorted to a quarantined room was of some fight, but she was quickly overwhelmed. The back of her hair was grabbed and pulled severely to the point of her falling on her back and then stomped in the midsection. She was quickly rounded up and shoved in the room and didn’t know she was next to Vince until a few minutes later. She heard this strange knocking to her left and someone calling out to her name when she realized it was Vince in the next quarantined room. Due to the thickness of the hard plastic make-shift walls surrounding them both it was very hard to hear words, and reading lips was somewhat of a challenge. Neither one was very good at it. With nothing to write on in their room communicating back and forth was very frustrating, but Vince’s attempt to tell her something was interrupted. He hears unzipping and air being released from the door being opened to his room. Turning around he sees two medical personnel standing and looking at him. Not knowing who they were he stares at them and gets sense that these two in the room are of importance. He walks up to them within a few feet and breaks the awkward silence.

VINCE: Who are you people?

DR. MELINDA: I’m Dr. Melinda Jones and this is Dr. Phil Marks. We are with the CDC.

VINCE: CDC, huh?! What the fuck is going on? Why did you bring us here?

DR. MELINDA: Mr. Green. You and Mrs. Smith were located in an extremely contaminated zone and radiation poisoning is very likely. We will need to run some tests on you both to make sure two are not in extreme danger, and if so we will need to know how to treat you.

VINCE: Treat us, huh? It probably wouldn’t matter anyway since we were out there for a very long time and most likely we will die. If so I would just ask that you let us die in peace and with less pain as possible.

DR. MELINDA: Once we know how much radiation you have been exposed to we will understand better of how to treat you. There is usually no cure for radiation poisoning, but the best we could do is to help you live better with the issue.

VINCE: We’re both part of the presidential campaign team so we would ask for transparency in this treatment.

DR. MELINDA: We planning on treating you two with such ideas in mind.

VINCE: Good. So what is next?

DR. MELINDA: We need to draw blood from you and get you cleaned up, change out of those clothes and ask that you be patient with us.

VINCE: See! That’s what I like. Respect and ask nicely you shall receive. Not those assholes I was dealing with earlier. Especially that bitch!

DR. MELINDA: They’re not my responsibility or under my command, but they can be a little heavy handed.

VINCE: A little heavy handed? Whatever…what do you need me to do?

DR. MELINDA: Strip down to your underwear and lie in the bed. We need to get blood from you and start that process.

VINCE: Sure. (Everyone just stands there looking at each other)

DR. MELINDA: Anytime you are ready.

VINCE: So I have to undress in front of you two?

DR. MELINDA: You don’t have anything that I haven’t seen already, Mr. Green. Besides stripping down to your underwear is all we need.

DR. MELINDA: I would ask you to refrain from using that language here. Some of my colleagues might take offense.

VINCE: You rather…cunt?

[NORTHERN FREDERICK COUNTY, MD]

Just a few minutes outside of Camp David, Jennifer and Marcus start to try their luck by searching in the nearby woods for any dead animals to eat. Not sure if any water source nearby is contaminated, they find a small stream flowing over the rocks and from their position it looks clean. Marcus still not trustworthy of his legs, and now going around with a prominent limp, Jennifer crawls down towards the stream and as she gets closer her excitement rises. She sticks her hand in the water once she reaches the stream’s edge, and the cold rushing water just pounding against her hand and flowing through her fingers, gets her excited and yells to Marcus that the water appears to be clean to drink. Hearing the exciting news, Marcus yells as loud as he can back at the car to Luther and Brooke, who sigh in great relief of possibly drinking some clean water.

Marcus limps as fast as he can through the tall grass to find a container to fill it with water. He gets about two feet from the car, and along with Brooke and Luther, hears a helicopter off in the distance and they can only speculate that it is near Camp David. Filled with such excitement Jennifer doesn’t hear the helicopter in the distance until it gets closer and she pulls her head from under the stream. She shakes her soaked blonde hair and strokes it back with her also wet hands as she frantically looks around to see where it is coming from as the noise bounces off the terrain. Suddenly the helicopter appears above going in the eastward direction, real low and slow as if it was about to land. Jennifer was able to get a look through the trees she was under at the helicopter flying low overhead. Frantic and excited about the possibilities of being rescued by American soldiers she finds her way across the stream to follow the helicopter. When it disappears behind a set of farm buildings and trees, she stops and immediately make her way back to the rest of the crew. As she gets closer to them, Marcus looks at her with a curious look and asked her, “Who was that? Are they American?” Jennifer looks at him and responds, “I’m not sure who that is! I just know we need to find out.”

Brooke shouts out, “What about water?! We are severely dehydrated?” Jennifer pauses after getting back in the driver seat, and tells everybody, “We’ll come back. I promise. We need to find out if they will be able to help us.” Luther jumps in as she pulls off, “If they can’t help us? Then what?” Another pause by Jennifer before she responds to Luther’s concern, “Hopefully we don’t find out.” She drives off and heads in a direction where she thinks the helicopter might’ve landed, which takes her down dirt and private roads bypassing old abandoned farm buildings and dead animals tucked away in the brush. After about ten minutes of guessing where she thought the helicopter landed, Luther points out to her that he can see it through a set of thick branches. Jennifer leans forward to see if she can spot it and she does when they break through a small clearing that doesn’t impede their vision.

Jennifer was able to find a spot that they could park in and hide themselves from being seen. She pulls parallel off the dirt road and in a position where all four can see the helicopter about 100 yards into the grassy field. While they are watching the crew of the helicopter mulling about doing whatever they are doing, Jennifer begins to ask a question to everyone in the car about who are they waiting for. Finally, Brooke breaks the streak of silence and comes up with an idea of just going over there to at least get medical help. This becomes a discussion between the four of them for at least a few minutes of what to do, who is to go, all four should go or neither should go. After a few minutes of going at each other’s throats, Marcus makes a decision in a very determination voice to go over there and get help. Making the argument that he isn’t sure if they will have another opportunity to get help. Several minutes of hesitation looms over the situation and Jennifer makes the decision to drive over to them, but does it at a speed not to alarm and frighten the men. Almost no matter what they do it will definitely strike up the alarm in the men.

Great anticipation and nervousness creeps through the car as Jennifer makes her way on to the grassy field towards the helicopter. Coming from underneath the shadows of the trees, they just knew that someone would see them right away. Anticipating being spotted at any moment, Jennifer moves ever so slowly towards the helicopter and is shocked that they haven’t been spotted yet. Suddenly, they are approximately fifty yards away from the helicopter and someone opens fires on the car, which causes Jennifer to accelerate in shear panic. Everyone in the car is screaming and yelling as rapid fire rounds pierce through every glass structure in the car, the hood and one tire blown out. Even with heavy fire coming at them, Jennifer maintains control of the car and turns away from the helicopter to only find that she was heading towards a tree stump. Turning away from the tree stump became impossible when both front tires were blown out and the car just slid through the grass striking the tree stump. A very loud crash and scratching could be heard as the car went over top of the stump and crashing in place. Although the rapid fire of rounds had stopped, they were not completely out of danger as Jennifer fruitlessly tried to start the car. Male voices could be heard coming up from behind them and before they knew it, automatic weapons were being pointed at them with trigger happy soldiers.

Jennifer went to explain that they are just looking for help, but discovers the soldier at her door is only shouting at her in a foreign language; which to her is German sounding. She pauses and glances at each one of them to see who they are and notices that each one looks German, but in a blue camo design unlike the U.S. Air Forces design. Silence falls upon them and Jennifer becomes brave enough to ask in German, who they were and her response shocked her senses when one of them said United Nations Security Force to preserve stability.